Nasty Surprise from BT

thegouster

Back in February we had a fault with our BT phone line so BT arranged an engineer to call. We were advised that there may be a charge if the problem was down to us.
Fair enough.
The engineer arrived and quickly diagnosed the problem as the main phone point coming into the house.
Apparently it was a common problem due to some minor corrosion though there were no visible signs. The engineer replaced the front of the socket and everything worked fine.
Yesterday we recieved our BT bill which included a one off engineers charge (from February) of £211.35. !!!
I was under the impression that the main, point of entry phone point, was BTs responibility so I queried the charges and was told that the responsibility for the front of the main phone point was mine.
BT 'split' the box with them being responsible for the back part (plastic) and the customer being responsible for the front part (electrical contacts etc).
So, I'm a little bit peeved to say the least.
I don't remember BT telling me that the phone point with BT stamped all over it was my responsibility to maintain.
Are there any BT customers who already knew they were responsible for this part of the instalation ?

Sirkent

I've remember being told that BT are responsible for the wiring 'up to' the master socket. However, I had a BT engineer replace my entire master socket a few weeks ago and I was not charged.

thegouster

Sirkent wrote: »

............. and I was not charged.

That's exactly what I thought, as the engineer never even hinted that I would be charged. However, the bill dropped on the mat yesterday, over two months later.

iniltous

If you have a modern NTE5 type master socket ( with the detachable bottom section ) the bottom part is where you would connect any extension wiring, thats why if your line goes faulty the first thing they ask is for you to remove the bottom section and use the test socket behind the panel, to eliminate the extension wiring as the cause of the fault.
You dont state if you have/had and extension wiring connected to your 'consumer panel' of the NTE.
What you may be gettting hit for is if the damage to the socket wasnt considered fair wear and tear, its Openreach who charge ( BT retail are the Service Provider and they are passing on the charge plus a little extra for the admin)
Things like spilling liquids onto the socket , causing corrosion are not considered fair wear and tear.
Sometimes its not the engineer who raises the charge, but OR back office staff, who trawl the engineers fault closure notes and if they think a charge is appropriate they can bill the service provider, and its the SP who pass on the charge to the end user, thats why there can be quite a delay between the fault and the charge ,and why the engineer didnt mention it at the time

thegouster

Thanks for the reply iniltous.
Yes the master socket is the NTE5 type and I did go through the fault finding procedure as detailed on page 5 of BTs own 'The Phone Book'.
At the end of the procedure it states in 'The Phone Book' that if the problem remains it's time to phone your phone company to arrange an engineers visit.
Nowhere does it say that the master socket is the customers responsibility.
If it had, I would have bought a new master socket and installed it myself for under a tenner, just to eliminate it as a possible fault.
Also, when BT told me a charge may be possible, I was not given the remotest idea what the charge could be.
I know the problem had not been diagnosed, but an idea of the call out charge and hourly rate would have been appreciated.
After all, who authorises work to be done in their house without knowing how much it will cost ?
The 'corrosion' was the engineers guess.
Like I said, there was no visible sign of any, though I wouldn't expect there to be as nothing has ever been spilled on it and it's in a warm dry enviroment.
Also, many thanks for the info regarding BT Openreach. I will definately follow that up.